


Two Halves Make a Soul

by Eloarei



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 19:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3989188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I wonder where it goes. With vampires, with me. Where does your soul go when they rip it out of you?” </p>
<p>Some would say perhaps it goes on. On, on to heaven, wherever. He would say, perhaps, it goes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Halves Make a Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a longfic that really needs me to continue it, but I guess I needed to take a break for something short and vaguely nonsensical. My prompting thought was “what happens if someone's reincarnated but then their past-self comes back as a zombie?” Not a headcanon, just an idea I felt like playing with.

Maybe just ten years of rot, he thought. But he was not an expert on corpses, probably never had been. Maybe it was ten years, maybe it was twenty-five. He didn't know. He didn't know anything. All he knew was Hanna.   
  
Was magic something that was in your soul? Did you have it when you were born? When you died? “Ahah, I learned it from this homeless guy a couple years ago,” Hanna had told him. But that didn't answer the question.   
  
He knew nothing of magic, save the glowing runes he saw now. They didn't look familiar, no.   
  
But Hanna _was_ , in ways that didn't make sense, but not enough to worry over. It was just comfort where there should have been strangeness, a desire to protect where only mild concern lived before. It was not for others. It was only for him.   
  
Did Hanna feel that way as well? It was hard to say. He rushed around, so full of energy and life, and mysteries and lies. He said he was fine. The vampire said he was rotten and hollow. The ghost said he was sick. The terrible zig-zag scar said he was broken.   
  
“You weren't supposed to see that,” he didn't say, but it was clearly his hidden shame, the tragedy he hid with a grin.   
  
It didn't matter to him that Hanna was sick and broken, that he was hollow and rotten. But was he happy?   
  
To Hanna, it didn't matter that _he_ was a leather-bound book with all the words scratched out. But was he happy?   
  
The answers: something is missing.   
  
They were each a mystery, not to themselves but to the other. What did he care for his past when he had Hanna to fix? What did Hanna care for his own, when it was the past? What in the here and now could fill the holes they had that kept them incomplete?   
  
“Do you ever wonder about the afterlife?” Hanna asked him. “I mean, where did you go when you died? Where did your body pull you back from? Were you hanging out in heaven before the world decided it wasn't done with you after all?”   
  
Hanna asked these questions. He asked a lot of questions. Rarely did he give answers to the ones _he_ never verbalized. But once, he did, when maybe the emptiness was _too_ empty to bear. He sat close. He talked.   
  
“That big scar I have, I don't know if you remember it.” He remembered it. It had been a while now, but how could he forget? “It was when I was a kid. I still don't know exactly what happened. Something, some demon, ripped me open and stole something from me. That's why the vampires say I only have half a soul. They would know, wouldn't they? I wonder where it goes. With vampires, with me. Where does your soul go when they rip it out of you?”   
  
Some would say perhaps it goes on. On, on to heaven, wherever. _He_ would say, perhaps, it goes back.   
  
There was once he had told Hanna he wasn't going to leave. He understood, Hanna was nervous. He'd been abandoned too many times. No choice of theirs, but he'd been left by his parents, by his own soul, the things that made him him. Wouldn't someone stay?   
  
He didn't want them, but sometimes he got glimpses of his past. Today he said “I will stay,” but it felt so like “take care of yourself.” The both of them, they were so reckless. But he wanted to live up to the two promises that felt like one. _'Hanna,'_ he thought, _'I will take care of us where I failed to before.'_ No choice of his, that he'd gotten himself killed, just a failure. No choice of his, that he'd come back. But there was no way to fix it now. If he 'died', would this half a soul go on, or would it go back to where it ought to be? Was there any way to reunite the halves?   
  
Hanna looked at him. Comfort where there should have been strangeness, no mild concern but a _real_ desire to not be left alone. Two wrongs don't make a right, taking twice to give back one would not solve the emptiness. They both knew.  
  
Neither of them minded that they were sick and broken, stitched up and scratched out, half rotten and half empty. Were they happy?   
  
The answer: as long as they were together. 


End file.
